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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaMatthew Tree|title=The Swan ThievesWe'll Never Know|rating=24.5

|summary=1999 – A renowned painterTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artisthad endless crises of self confidence. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get So Tim applied himself to his patient to talk to himstudies, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to cultivated his wife and abilities rather than his girlfriend, daydreams and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanityset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Atiq RahimiB0C47LV1PC|title=The Patience StoneFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=Set in Afghanistan, Can you make a ''The Patience StoneYo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she question should you make it? Or is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which question if you tell your troubles and when did, would it land? The catch is that the stone finally bursts, you are free from your tormentsanswer for both could well be.... But also this might mean the Apocalypseno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Joyce Carol Oates|title=A Fair Maiden|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection 'Fragility'The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates and couldn't wait is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to start her latest book. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - and I was. Firstly, emerge from the restrictions imposed during the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dai Sijie Mosby Woods|title=Once on a Moonless NightA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=3.54

|summary=The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A French female scholarwar here, studying in China, finds herself caught up in the search a push for a lost, sacred text climate action there. A feeling that was inscribed on an ancient scrollnobody is in actual charge. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years agoImagine then, and there was losta man with precognition. After falling Imagine the strategic advantage in love with this asset; a young grocer called Tumchooq man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the young woman becomes caught up most valuable asset in tales within taleshistory. Imagine then, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the searchthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Trofimuk 0571379559|title=Waiting for ColumbusThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=I was hooked instantly by ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the titlestory of four people. OriginalTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, thought-provokingbuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, quirkystorms and floods. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want complete the delivery rounds - and to shiver) bring in modern-day Spainsufficient money. The staff They have their work cut outtwin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. He doesnSonny't remember s colouring reflects his name or anything at all about mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his pastfather. HePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's sporadically violent - and he says he an assumption when Max is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figureout with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Su Tong|title=The Boat to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced follow-up to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuanexcellent ''Ithaca''s fall from gracepicks up a few months after where we left off. Originally believed to be In the son palace of a revolutionary martyrOdysseus, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a resultwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, his position in society takes a nose-divewho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Dongliang suffers as a result As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds brink of a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heartfragile peace. Will she be able to take him out One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of himself? Or will sheMycenae, tooand his sister Elektra, turn her back on him?seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksKay Chronister|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=It took me With a while to realise world that Iain Banks isbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, most of allpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a teller world devoid of tales - I would call him water or a story-teller had nuclear holocaust, this term not became genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a complimentnew work of post-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the modern publishing worldfears that exist for humanity today. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave It is a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives shocking novel that still manages to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, charactersfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Mary McCarthy Eric LaRocca|title=The GroupTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary='Given the attention paid Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.Big Bad'' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and the City, in by the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Group by Mary McCarthyTrees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. First published in 1963, this novel It is about the lives of a group collection of young women after leaving college short stories more interested in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parentsthe horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and moneyare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayMadelaine Lucas|title=Collected StoriesThirst for Salt

|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village''Love, he trudges through thereI'd read, was supposed to be a light and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hoursweightless feeling, but I had always longed for reasons that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayorgravity''s house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Jennifer Johnston|title=Truth or Fiction|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Caroline Wallace is not Told from a retrospective view, a happy young womanunravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. She has waited ten Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years for her lover senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauriceits sorrowful end the summer after. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''sex and violenceThirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his storydepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesMichael Grothaus|title=Staring at the SunBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes But fearing something and he runs away having it come to Americapass are two different things. HeAnd I's replaced by Tommy Prosserm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marriesor we can take steps to change it. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Russell Celyn Jones|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the Mabinogion) |rating=4question of identity and acceptance.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change WalesOf what it means to be human. Life Of what is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism real and horsepower what is artificial, and whether the main means development of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livestechnology is exciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersJennifer Saint|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Atalanta|rating=4.5

|summary=In the old tale''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, Branwen is not just in the sister name of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britaingoddess. She marries It was for the King sake of Irelandmy name, who doesntoo. Atalanta''t treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.

In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheepPrincess. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairWarrior. Lover. Hero. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Shirley Jackson|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as MerricatAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in raised under the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws protective eye of the reader goddess Athemis and fashioned into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsformidable huntress, and everyone else in her family is deadone who longs for adventure. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept When the house 'steady against opportunity comes – to join the world'Argonauts, shutting out other peoplea fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and they live near carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a village. Merricat believes that 'The people whirlwind of the village have always hated uschallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis', and tells us fatal warning: that if she hates them toomarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah GregoryAmanthi Harris|title=Dancing With The DeadBeautiful Place|rating=35

|summary=I wanted Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to read ''Dancing with the Dead'', because I'm interested in family history. The blurb Villa Hibiscus on the back southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current Villa, how it became her home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born , and brought up). I felt with all these links, the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel could not fail . Padma's present fails to interest me – but this was not escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the caseVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their children's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present danger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine May178563335X|title=Burning Out|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Tove Jansson|title=The True DeceiverHilary Taylor

|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's work unwittinglydaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, via on the televised renditions Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would vicar, Gail, but then have she's been entranced a few doing the job for more than thirty years ago to discover . Rachel and Christopher hoped that at last Thomas Teal had set about a walk on the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann 1398515388|title=Me The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and KaminskiAlison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksFirst of all, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'. In itwas the earthquake, Sebastian Zollnerdeep in the ocean floor, which created the obnoxious main charactertsunami and this, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminskiturn, caused the proposed subject, nuclear meltdown. The result was a fashionable painter long ago, but nowcomplete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivionthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. So The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the secondtsunami -rate writer is on Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a loser unless dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he can dig up some juicy details would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to hook open his car door and Tamon the art world and general publicdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon0989715337|title=When Rooks Speak of LovePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at ''Some frogs had gotten into the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)well. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=David Malouf |title=Ransom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's griefWalter stood waist-stricken voyage into deep in the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth fragrant water, naked except for the body his beaten leather hat. Long strands of his fallen sontheir eggs wove around him, Hector, killed by sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells dogs leaned over the story in sparse, yet lyrical opening and poetic fashion suggesting barked down at the personal stories behind strange noise of the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving buckets as well as a great piece of story tellinghe filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=David Vann |title=Legend How is that for an opening? The style of a Suicide|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation and that's this novel in the case with ''Legend of a Suicide''. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series form of interconnected short stories linked by a common themegoes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, or turning on a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer to all these questions is ''yes'' – for the book is all that and moresixpence. It's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morningAnd author Marco North, resenting every moment away from who has the bookmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Milan Kundera|title=The Book of Laughter and Forgetting|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's with a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kundera. He's certainly a very good writer and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable of interesting philosophical insights. All those qualities contributed to a cult status accorded to Kundera, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with the fall of the Iron Curtain).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Daisy Hildyard|title=One Morning Like A BirdEmergency

|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is a place that we British tend not to give a great deal The summary of thought this book doesn't come close to. Japan entered the war, we say, explaining what is done with the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest of the world, was already a country at war. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory in the area as wellpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sadie Jones Sally Oliver |title=Small WarsThe Weight of Loss |rating=4.5

|summary=Even though our world Marianne is ostensibly at peace, hundreds grieving. Traumatised after the death of localizedher sister, unwinnable conflicts continue she awakes to grumble on. Mostlyfind strange, we only hear and care about thick black hairs sprouting from the ones involving 'our boys', as if war was some giant game bones of footballher spine which steadily increase in size and volume. But it isn'tHer GP, and ''Small Wars'' reflects on diagnosing the casualties of war in odd phenomenon as a story set in Cyprus physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in the Two-Way Family Favourites era of the nineteen-fiftiesWales. It may turn out Yet something strange is happening to be an important book as Marianne and the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistanother patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. ItAs Marianne's certainly memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a prescient oneterrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelyn WaughNatalia Garcia Freire|title=A Handful of DustThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=A complex class society which evolved into Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a highly sophisticated culture delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is invariably perhaps using the expression in a fertile ground for development of social satire, and British literature would way I'm not familiar with. I have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Evelyn Waugh made From the genre his ownlittle I have read (in translation, and I don''A Handful of Dust'' is t read Spanish) there does seem to be a sublime example of his mastery of ittendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=William Trevor |title=Love and Summer|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Love and Summer'' is set in the small town of Rathmoye in a rural Ireland 'some years after the middle of the last century'. The novel charts the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmer's wife, and Florian, the Irish-Italian son of two artists, but it as much about the place and time in which it is set.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bryony Doran Jennifer Saint|title=The China BirdElektra

|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Late middle-agedCassandra, Clytemnestra, twisted-spined and hump-backed, a loner who works Elektra are all bit players in the archive basement story of the library, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his mother.  Like many an unmarried man with an aging, widowed mother, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strainedTrojan War. Unlike many of those men, his relationship was always Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that way.  She is rude and demanding, and he either doesn't often the silent women have the strength or most compelling stories and the inclination to force the issue with her. Apart from an occasion half-hearted reprimand, he stands back, ignores, makes excusesmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095556302X</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jude Morgan 8409290103|title=The Taste of SorrowIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=The children were born in ThorntonTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, a suburb of BradfordMr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and compared with where they were thereafter Patrick was to go it was send him a soft livingmonthly allowance. Howarth was high Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up on between the Yorkshire Moors, industrialised and with weather which chilled two although we hear more about what Lowry has to the bonesay than Patrick. The parsonage It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was four-square but draughty that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and not exactly welcoming. They, of course, were the Brontë familyother children. The father alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the impoverished curate and young man on his six children had somehow to be cared for after his wife's death from cancerway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Agnes Owens Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Complete NovellasRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Who is Agnes Owens? A Scottish author who portrays working class life from the nineteen forties [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and fiftiesread in my house. Now an octogenarianAnd so was this one, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at the age of 58. Here are five previously published stories collected into although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one new editionwas, a companion volume to her short storiesand is, published in 2008black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I don't think youit'll be disappointeds possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J M CoetzeeB098FFFBH9|title=SummertimeSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=''Summertime'' Fourteen-year-old Rachel is the third of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzee, following on from ''Boyhood'her school' s animal rights project leader and she and ''Youth''. There, that sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Except, her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described the earlier volumes) which human beings exploit the subject is deadanimal world. So, clearly, this story isn't 'true'. But then, how true is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it She gets a function great deal of the novel to use fiction to reveal truth? So many questions, and I haven't even begun.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Lever|title=Me Cheeta|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir support from one of its stars. There are scores to be settledher family: father Pip Harrison, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted a lecturer at none too subtleyImperial College, and lost opportunities to be longed for. OhLondon, mother Kate and the star telling all? Wellher twin, for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta - chimpanzee star of the Tarzan filmsNick.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Erick Setiawan |title=Of Bees and Mist|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The first few chapters of this amazing workKate runs the family business, had me scratching my heada toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, and pondering, 'what on earth which is this about, and where is it going?' It struck me as simply bizarre. However, I was quickly reeled in, and the initially disparate cast of characters, who seemed more like caricatures, soon had lives of their own - and fascinating ones at that!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755348532</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hilary Mantel|title=Wolf Hall|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A revisionist look at Henry VIIIwe's minister, Thomas Cromwell. Rich, absorbing and intelligent, itll meet Rachel's a beautiful, beautiful bookmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007230184</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=A S ByattYancey Williams|title=The Children's BookCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=Antonia Byatt's BookerAward-nominated ''The Children's Book'' (her first novel for seven winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years) is a staggering, complex and multi-layered book, set between the last years of Victoria's reign despite his strenuous objections and the end of the First World War. Although this is undoubtedly an intelligent bookthanks to his daughter, full of learning and ideasfinds himself living - or imprisoned, ranging from class, early feminism, Fabianism and anarchism, it is highly readable and accessible. The authorEddie's stance is that this was a unique time for children point of view - in the UK, freed from the 'be seen and not heard' of the early Victorian age, but before the 'treat them like adults' room 315 of the post war loss Garden of innocence. It was a time when children, at least rich children, were allowed to be free and adult authors like JM Barrie wrote both about and for children and was also widely read by adults.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701183896</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colm Toibin |title=Brooklyn|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Colm Tóibín's quietly powerful new novel, Brooklyn, opens in the author's own home town of Enniscorthy, County Wexford in the 1950s. We are sitting with his conscientiously introverted heroine, Eilis Lacey, as she watches through the upstairs living room window as her more glamorous older sister Rose walks briskly Eden nursing home from work. Rose is popular at the local golf club, with many male admirers. Meanwhile, Eilis' three brothers have all gone to England where there is work to be had. There are few opportunities in Enniscorthy, for employment or anything else. Eilis is lucky to be offered a Sunday job in Miss Kelly's grocery shop, a shop Eilis' widowed mother will not enter. Later, Eilis will entertain her mother and sister with imitations of Miss Kelly's voice. Showing everything only through Eilis' eyes, Tóibín brilliantly evokes life in the claustrophobically tight-knit town.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918121</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Shandi Mitchell |title=Under This Unbroken Sky|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A photograph opens the story. A black and white picture of a familytrusty nursing aide, husbandJenkins, wife and their three children, smiling for the camerapalatable company. Thin, underfed, in their summer clothes despite the four inches of snow, they smile. Partly they smile because they do not know what Nothing is going to come.  A page and five years later we catch up with the Mykolayenkos. In the Spring of 1938 Ivan and keep Eddie from his cousin are catching mice stock-in the barn and taking bets on which -trade of the farm cats will pounce on the individually released rodents first. The game is interrupted by a man with a loaded .22 rifle. It takes a while for it to sink in, that this is Ivan's fatherwriting though, Teodorso here, free after a prison sentence for stealing his own grain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297856588</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roddy Doyle|title=Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I'm kind of a reverse literary snobreaders, in that I tend to avoid books that win awards. I've found that such books are often very well written, but they're not always good reading. As shameful as it is to admit, I would much rather read for story as for fancy words. Clearly I'm not alone, as in 1993, the year Roddy Doylehis wanderings through his life's ''Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha'' won the Booker Prize, the bestseller lists contained [[:Category:John Grisham|John Grisham]], Sue Townsend and Jeffrey Archerwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535084</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Waters 0008421714|title=The Little Stranger|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When was the last time you couldn't put a Booker nominated novel down? Sarah Waters, author of acclaimed novels ''Fingersmith'' and ''The Night Watch'' has written a chilling psychological ghost story that kept me guessing until the very last page.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086011</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=James Kelman |title=How Late It Was, How LateVirginia Feito

|summary=Sammy has The problem began just woken up outside in what looks likes a park after a heavy night the publication of drinkingGeorge March's most successful novel to date. He can't remember much – how he got there, Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or why he is wearing some old trainers and not his new shoeshad already done so. He doesn Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't know whatthis the first time he's happened to his wallet or why people are staring at him. He does remember some things – one being based a row of some sorts hecharacter on you?''d She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had with Helen, his girlfriend'her mannerisms''. Now he has been arrested Perhaps this would not have mattered, beaten up by except for the police, and released back onto fact that Johanna is the street again. He needs to find whore of Nantes - ''a way to get homeweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, the only problem is; he has just gone blindunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546272</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Douglas Coupland|title=Generation A|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I think with Douglas Coupland you either love him or hate him. So I suppose I should probably say straight off that he's one of my favourite writers. I've read all his fiction, and I just about peed my pants with excitement at getting Move on to review this latest offering, ''Generation A''. Those in the know will see that he is jumping off from his earlier novel, ''Generation X'', that dealt with three disillusioned twenty-somethings who seem to have opted out of life, working 'Mcjobs' in the Californian desert and telling each other stories to pass the time. Here, with this new generation, there's storytelling again, this time amongst five characters, all from different places in the world, and different ages, who are brought together through one singular event in each of their lives - they are each stung by a bee.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019836</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]